Politics & Power Quote by George W. Bush

A line like this doesn’t argue; it indicts. Bush turns foreign policy into a moral ledger, where “supports, protects or harbours” reads like a legal net cast wide enough to catch not just perpetrators but bystanders, weak states, and inconvenient allies. The phrasing is deliberate: “complicit” and “equally guilty” collapse gradations of responsibility. There’s no difference, rhetorically, between pulling the trigger and failing to evict the gunman. That blunt equivalence is the point. It’s meant to foreclose the usual diplomatic escape hatches: sovereignty, capacity, ambiguity, deniable ties.

The specific intent was to create a doctrine-ready standard after 9/11, one that could justify pressure, sanctions, and ultimately military action against regimes deemed to be sheltering terrorist networks. By framing the issue as “the murder of the innocent,” Bush aligns U.S. policy with a universalized victimhood that is hard to contest without sounding monstrous. “Harbours” in particular does heavy lifting: it implies intent and welcome, not merely a failure of control.

The subtext is an ultimatum: pick a side, now. It signals that neutrality will be treated as hostility, and that evidentiary thresholds will be political as much as forensic. In the early War on Terror context - Afghanistan, the Taliban’s relationship to al-Qaeda, the broader push to reshape international norms - the quote functions as both warning and permission slip. It doesn’t just describe complicity; it manufactures it, widening the category of legitimate targets while moralizing the consequences.